Relic of the Past, Part 2

The anemone tentacles had much more opportunity to harass Adelai on the exit journey.
It took her a couple good leaps to even get a good grasp on the edge of the container's hatch, and a few moments of hoisting herself out, before she was able to pull free of them and pluck their pincers from her armor.
"Oh, shit," she hissed, freezing. Secured as he was to her helmet, Turoa saw what she saw, but could not discern what had alarmed her.
Standing atop the shipping container gave them a good vantage across the rest of the room. In the area beyond the chandelier, and largely obscured by it, she glimpsed dark recesses in the walls. These, she presumed, were the halls out of the room. Golden shimmers reflected back from the dark, bobbing with movement as clawed feet broke the water with soft splashes. [Turoa Fuimano] What?
[Adelai Maltinalto] Eyeshine. [Adelai Maltinalto] Probably from Laughing Night. [Adelai Maltinalto] Wish you had better comms. I'd share my Codex with you. [Adelai Maltinalto] Does your camera not pick it up?
[Turoa Fuimano] It wouldn't seem so. [Turoa Fuimano] Those things are nightmarish.
She turned off her flashlight, though the chandelier kept her well lit. The creatures froze at the change in lighting. One emitted a sound like a nervous chuckle, the other followed suit. The splashing continued, pointed and questing, now. [Adelai Maltinalto] Shit. [Adelai Maltinalto] They're looking for us. [Adelai Maltinalto] They're going to find us.
She turned her head slowly, orientating herself back towards the exit. In the periphery of his vision, and bowed out of proportion by the lens of his camera, Turoa saw a series of lean, spindly, long-legged canids with wide chests and lean hip. Mouths with too many teeth glowed with a coating of luminescent teal saliva, and their eyes looked ghostly when the light caught them. [Turoa Fuimano] I see them now. I count five. [Turoa Fuimano] One is looking right at us.
Just as Turoa spoke, the nervous chuckling grew into throaty, barking laughter, and the one staring directly at them broke into a run. There were plenty of obstacles between Adelai and the creatures, but their long legs made them easy.
Adelai didn't hesitate. She dug in her heels and ran, nearly slipping on the slick container as her boots thundered across its surface. She leapt, arms pinwheeling, and landed in the muck with an explosive splat that took her feet out from under her and sent her sliding towards the swamp waters. Her hip carved a furrow in the shore as she fell, but she was able to recover by throwing a hand into the muck and getting a knee beneath herself. She staggered back to her feet, and ran. [5:31 PM] Ademal the Narrator: The Laughing Nights' titular laughter welled into a baying, raging chorus of howls that sent the chandlier of blinking lights into a panicked, epileptic frenzy. They flashed like strobes, so brilliant they made it impossible for Adelai to look back over her shoulder and see how close the creatures were. The constant bright-dark wreaked havoc on Turoa's camera—contrails of static noise blurred behind every movement.
Turoa was grateful to be immune to motion sickness.
Even when keeping to the more stony coral and the patterns of lichenous growths flowering upon it, Adelai frequently found herself needing to cut across the sludgy morass of swamp mud. The filth acted as a treacherous plaster, smoothing out the rugged tread of her boots and forcing her to run in flat-footed bounds so as to put as little horizontal friction as possible. More than once she skated on the slippery mud, though it was only once intentional.
Each misstep came with a price, and each time Turoa had to fear that that price might be higher than Adelai could afford. She slipped and broke open a clutch of the maggot-beetle pods. She trusted a path only to find that it was the overgrown roof to a rusted-through vehicle. Her foot caved through and she stumbled, rolling down over its hood with a crash that sent her sprawling into the mud.
She was halfway to the door, and they were halfway across the room Mid-fall, she had spotted the creatures scaling the container. One stayed back to investigate the scent while the rest continued their chase. She might be able to make it to the door before them. Maybe.
Adelai waded across a spit of mud, dashed over an island clinging to a crumbled lifter drone, and stumbled to a halt with a swear. She'd navigated the space badly, and misjudged how far the island was from the exit. What she had judged as a leap over the water was looking more like a leap right into the middle of a pond teeming with eels.
She looked back. The strobing lights blacklit the silhouette of a Laughing Night only a few meters away and nearly to the spit of mud. There was now retracing her steps. She either went forward, or went down. The choice wasn't a happy one, but it was an easy one. She engaged her gun's seal and safety, jammed it into her hip holster, and leapt as far as she could. [6:20 PM] Ademal the Narrator: One of the Laughing Night, not so easily dissuaded from its prey, crashed into the water a moment after her. Hardpoint toes punched against her back, beating at the fleshy membrane of her cloak with enough force for its nails to pierce through and push her under the water. Blood wept from the wound—both from her, and from the cloak.
Turoa lost sight in the dark murk. He didn't have the organic faculties to panic but, in a logical, detatched sort of way, he registered a rising stress that Adelai might die, and that he would be left, again, in the darkness of the depths.
Kill it! Turoa said, unable to shout. He attempted a scream, such as the one he had attempted with Nalati, though the sound did nothing to dissuade the beast.
Adelai twisted under the water as the Laughing Night lunged at her with its teeth. Even through the watery murk, Turoa saw the glowing teal forest of teeth jutting from its jaw, as well as the swirling muscles of its tongue and throat as the luminescent poison coated its mouth.
Adelai's axe cracked across its face, sending an explosion of teeth and poison into the water. It recoiled, but not before she brought the axe down on its snout, cracking it open in a plume of blood, and again across its chest. Around them, the bladed eels went wild, driven mad by the scent of blood. They gravitated towards the open wound of the beast's face, stabbing hungrily at it with their beaks. The Laughing Night bucked and leapt back, and Adelai dug her heels into the mud and broke the surface, wade-swim-running across the pond to scrabble up the far shore over the high mound of trash and rot, and went skidding down the other side to where filth formed a levee and the water was a shallow pool over the marblecrete. She was back in the hall.
She pushed back against the levee and pulled her cloak over herself just moments before a Laughing Night cleared the levee and went running past. The wounded one followed a moment after, head drooping as blood wept from open cuts in its face. A bladed eel was trying to dig into the wound Adelai had left on its chest. The beast opened its jaw wide, regurgigated a tongue as big as an arm, and flexed it around to grab the eel and pull it into its mouth. It chewed down, and spat the eels head onto the floor. Its jaw kept snapping for a moment after its death.
Panting, the Laughing Night watched as several of its kin came barreling by, chests shuddering with their howls of malicious laughter. In the halls, their laughter echoed back, too loud to hear anything else. They passed, but the wounded one remained, sniffing at the air. The creature's ears perked, and it swiveled its head to where Adelai's cloak had her camouflaged into the levee.
Underneath her cloak, Adelai's grip on her gun was white-knuckled, she clicked off the safety and seal and aimed it through a small gap in the cloak, waiting. An intense itch was beginning to emanate wherever the beast had perforated her armor.
A chuckle formed in the Laughing Night's maw.
Two gunshots filled the hangar, halls, and corralums with echoing reports. The Laughing Night's head bucked as the first bullet traveled cattycorner up its right nostril and out its left sinus. The second bullet entered one cheek, exited the other eye, and took the spark of the creature's life with it. Its body convulsed and lurched, crashing down on a shoulder to slump dead.
She wasted no time getting back on her feet and making a dead sprint back for the elevator shaft. [6:20 PM] Ademal the Narrator: (Looks like that's where I pause for today, folks! I have some company in a bit. Thanks for readin!) [2:11 PM] Ademal the Narrator: Adelai's boots splattered and squeaked on the marblecrete as she ran, kicking up a spray of of water in her wake. The itch in her shoulder was heating up as though someone had rubbed peppers into the wound. She couldn't tell if it was sweat or blood running down her back inside of her suit. The chitinous dermal plating of her armor parted open, exposing orange, veiny flesh. [Turoa Fuimano] What is your armor doing? [Adelai Maltinalto] Regulating our body temperatures. [Turoa Fuimano] It has a body temperature? [Adelai Maltinalto] It's orga. It has a full metabolic process.
She skidded to a stop near to the elevator shaft, only to be slammed into the door as a Laughing Night came barreling around the other corner ahead of her and tackled her into the half-opened door. She grunted in pain as the wind was knocked out of her, but the gun went off before it could get in another attack. The two rounds into its chest weren't immediately effective, but the third put it down into a screaming heap lain across the hall as two more crouched, snarling, behind it. Maws studded with gleaming, venomous fangs yawned at her as they snarled and laughed. She heard more coming, and saw their glow approaching through the dark murk of the tunnels.
Her helmet squeezed down on her ears, muffling the noise of the gunshots as she opened up on the two as they lunged at her. One body ended up stacked atop the first, but the second cleared it. One shot hit, but the second missed as her arm was knocked askew. The creature stabbed down on her hand with it's hard foot, pinning the gun in place, and closed its jaws around her head. [Turoa Fuimano] Adelai! [Turoa Fuimano] No! [2:24 PM] Ademal the Narrator: Turoa watched, helpless. By the teal glow of its saliva he watched the fragile teeth snap off. Some shattered, leaving shards of envenomed fang studded into the wounds and shoved beneath the flesh, while others wedged into the bone, stuck even as the feral creature thrashed and gnashed.
It shuddered and shrieked, trying to recoil as a gleaming edge of metal punctured its throat. It was the bottom, hooked heel of Adelai's axe. A tug, and red light came pouring in as teal saliva came pouring out.
The axe retreated, but next jab came through the hole. Adelai's fist, closed around the head of the axe, punched into the wound with all of its strength, opening throat and windpipe and forcing the creature back. Yelping in agony, the creature retreated. Through the glaze of saliva and viscera, Turoa watched as Adelai staggered to her feet and stumbled into the halkf-open elevator shaft. She squeezed through, and fell down on her side as soon as she entered. Foam-blasting stalks jutted up through the mud and muck centimeters from her face. [Turoa Fuimano] You're alive. [Turoa Fuimano] I thought you were dead.
[Adelai Maltinalto] Not yet, give it a minute. [Adelai Maltinalto] But my armor is on its way out. [Adelai Maltinalto] I need Nalati, before my wounds get too infected.
Adelai sat up, pulled Turoa from off her head, and sat him aside. From an external vantage he realized, at last, that it wasn't her skull he had seen. It was the dense bony underplating of her armor. The cranium was cracked and bloody, and one of the lenses of her eyes was shattered open to reveal a very human eye staring back.
Adelai ran her thumb along a groove in the jaw of her helmet. It opened like a mouth—the lower quadrants parted like mantibles, while the 'upper raw' receded like a knight's beaver over the top of her head. Vapor poured out, and Adelai was quick to pull a backup respirator—a small canister fixed to a lower-face mask—over her head. Her chest bucked as she fought to slow her rapid, pained breath.
As she watched the door, Turoa took her in for the first time. Catharsis was more complex of an emotion than his prison could process, but there was something akin to it stirred up by seeing one of his fellow Venuans in the flesh. He saw the stoic, high cheekbones of his people, as well as the straight bridge of the nose and the eyes like falcons. Her dark hair was swept back and matted with sweat, and a symbol was tattooed on her cheek.
Her face was not only Venuan, however. It was a mild case of Bleak, at least by Turoa's limited knowledge on the subject, but the Bleak had mottled the natural hues of her flesh—rich sands and clay earth, the proud salt and soil of Venua—into a sickly pallid grey. Mutation altered the geography of the right side of her face, tugging her mouth into a toadlike taper and studding the flesh with bumps and scales the color of a bruise. The bloodshot sclera of her mutant eye was yellow, and a red-orange iris peered out, pupil drawn into a pinprick.
Distant laughter.
"More are coming."
Adelai reached to her hip, then began to pat around the mud and her lap. Her expression was severe and drawn, focused purely on surviving.
"Fuck, it's gone." She heaved herself to her feet and staggered against the wall, whimpering in pain. It was the shoulder where the beast had pounced on her back and perforated the armor. "It's out there in the hall. I'm not going to survive going back for that but I'm not going to make it out of here without it either."
[Turoa Fuimano] The vector gauntlet.
Adelai snorted. "Not unless you can teach me how to use it in five minutes." [Turoa Fuimano] It's that or death, right? [Turoa Fuimano] That's about how long it too me to get the basics of the glove. [Turoa Fuimano] This will be easy. [Turoa Fuimano] Casting is easy enough. [Turoa Fuimano] Aiming is the tricky part. [Turoa Fuimano] Can you stand?
Adelai pushed herself upright. "I can even run. For a while longer."

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